trying to get pictures of our new puppy when it wont sit still is impossible..
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Awww. You might have to wait till sleepy time. Congrats on the new pup!
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I didn’t log much last week. My brain was full of stuff and I kept listing my workouts but then ending them with what basically amounted to a journal entry detailing a very sticky social situation.
And my conscience said, “Hey, maybe that’s a bad idea.” So I took that advice and wrote nothing.
Sunday - Upper
Superset: Every minute on the 3 minutes
Cable Row: 4 x failure with 2-3 drop sets
Lateral Raise: 4 x failure
I love the fatigue and pump that comes with supersets like this.
Dip: 5 x 5
Here’s a reminder: Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the strength to do something that used to be easy. It could just be a nervous system thing.
A couple weeks ago, I was only able to do a few wobbly dips per set, and yesterday it felt much easier. I was able to use a slow eccentric, pause at the bottom, and control the concentric back to the top. Did I suddenly gain that much strength? I doubt it.
Machine Row: 4 x 8 bilateral, then unilateral 8 right arm, 8 left arm
The handle placement on this machine doesn’t feel right. Why didn’t they just get an old school T-bar row? Hot take: There is no better back exercise than a T-Bar Row.
Superset:
Straight Arm Pulldown: 3 x 8-10
Tricep Pulldown: 3 x 8-10
Abs
Yep! Here’s why…
The Study of Energy Vampires
Here’s me not taking the advice I gave myself last week.
There was an interview recently where a communication expert said that we can be generous in three different ways: with money, with time, and with social energy. And that last one is fascinating because most people don’t consider energy or charisma a form of currency, but it is. And it’s finite, just like the other two things.
However, when someone continually pressures you to spend time with them, and they attend events where they know you’re going to be, and they follow you around after you’ve said “good bye” to them multiple times, and follow you to your car to continue talking to you, and they try to talk you into coming to their house even when you tell them that you are not up for it, and they won’t accept your (very kind and gentle) way of saying “no thanks”… then yeah, it feels pretty freaking sticky.
And you become very aware of how quickly your energy runs out around them.
Believe it or not, this is a pattern that I’ve experienced since childhood. A similar situation happened last year. The most extreme example of this happened in college with a female professor. It got creepy.
So here’s the deal: highly manipulative women get hooked on me like crack. I don’t fully understand it. But if I had to guess, they might get attached because I’m encouraging and easily impressed. I make people feel really good because I see the best in them.
That doesn’t seem to explain it completely though. Many of these women have had successful careers like the nutrition professor, some have been married with kids. Lifestyle wise, there’s no obvious commonality among them that would make you think they are high-drama or mentally ill.
But they always try to rush a brand new friendship in an unnatural way, the way Robert Greene describes with the idea of frenemies.
I don’t even know if “frenemy” applies to my situation, but maybe? With this last female, she would drop little comments to try and make me feel insecure. It happened right after my stand-up performance (which I did not invite her to). Chris pointed it out to me and then I started to make note of the pattern.
It’s the strangest phenomenon, and I’ve yet to see much about this written anywhere.
Now, obviously this isn’t the norm. Most females I know have the maturity to not need me as their doormat. But it’s the ten percent who get weirdly attached, and consequently, make me feel exhausted and afraid to commit to any adult friendships – even potentially healthy ones.
Luckily, I have developed a radar and can accurately predict when it’s about to happen by asking myself some simple questions:
- Does this person drain my energy?
- Does this person try to make me feel sorry for her when I set boundaries?
- Does this person try to take me down a peg?
- Does this person try to manipulate me into spending more time with her?
- Does this person frequently use bait and switch tactics to get me to do more than what we originally agreed upon?
Note to self: If the answer is yes to more than one of those questions, be prepared for it to come to a head where you will either have to get uncomfortably direct or flat out ghost the person. In either case, you will feel like the bad guy. It’s lose-lose no matter what.
Granted, sometimes I question my own sanity. Like, “am I the crazy one? Am I actually a bad person for wanting to escape from people who make me feel trapped?”
You tend to gaslight yourself when something keeps happening. And that’s part of the reason why I was afraid to write about this. I didn’t know if anyone would believe me.
If this is a pattern, then obviously I’m the common denominator and need to make some kind of change to my personality. And that was the entire reason why my New Year’s resolution to become a people displeaser.
To incite even more guilt, last year at church – while I was in the middle of one such situation and sitting right next to the person who was doing this to me – there was this sermon about how if you don’t spend enough time with your friends, then you are a selfish person. And to be honest, that felt pretty damn rapey. Ideas like that give clingy people the impression that they have every right to control you and to dictate how much time you spend with them… even when you hardly know them. And she made sure to connivingly ask me what I thought about the lesson afterward with a huge smug grin on her face.
I felt a level of rage that I can’t even begin to explain, and I had to bury it.
But at least this time around, I was direct. I’m actually getting better at it. The downside is that I am keeping more people at arms’ distance, and my metaphorical arms are getting longer.
Thank you for coming to my journal entry detailing a very sticky situation.
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It depends on the nasal spray. The saline ones are fine to use continuously but will not help unless your sinuses are actually clogged.
In a lot of cases, the blocked nose is due to inflammation (nose has erectile tissue) and sprays that fix that use corticosteroids to get rid of the inflammation. It’s fine for temporary/occasional used. If used chronically, your body gets used to the steroids and overcompensates just like it would to corticosteroid skin creams for conditions like eczema.
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Sucky situation, my wife has similar situations and women who specifically latch on to her in a similar way, you aren’t alone.
A quick search for a relevant term for it came up with emotional parasitism. Not sure if that’s really close enough might give you somewhere to start investigating and coming up with some tactics to prevent it in the future?
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Oh my gosh thank you for this. It can (and has) caused quite a bit of depression because I end up feeling selfish and cruel. I wish there was some sort of support group for it… but you know who would join?
The vampires who latch onto us. It would be like creating a support group called, women with delicious blood.
WHOA. I had done a bunch of searching and couldn’t find a term. That’s really helpful. Again, thank you.
I found a couple tactics on accident. One is just to not give any explanations for why you won’t be joining them. It’s hard to put into practice, but if you can say “no” in an abrupt and powerful manner without giving an explanation, they won’t see it as an answer that’s up for debate.
If you say “no because…” and give an explanation, they will debate you, or try to talk you into doing what they want. It feels like you’re arguing with a child who always gets her way.
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Thanks I’ll definitely have to share this with my wife, she’ll struggle with it, but she’s definitely becoming more assertive and direct, addressing things more readily. I think having gone through this sort of thing through so many cycles makes you realise that you really do have to do something about it.
That is hilarious.
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I’ve never heard the term “emotional parasitism”, but maybe at last there is another valid psychic use for ivermectin. 
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…
If they eat energy, and you give off a ton of energy, you may as well be crack to a crackhead.
a question you dont need to answer…
Why do you feel that being selfish is a bad thing?
Something I’ve noticed, is that almost any time someone accuses someone else of being selfish, its because they want something from them…
So whose the selfish one?
The one who isn’t sharing their food, or the one whose guilting someone into sharing food they don’t want to share?
It can’t really be considered “selflessness” if you’re guilted into doing it. It didn’t originate from you.
I apply the same principle to Valentines day.
If the only reason he’s getting her flowers is because she pressured him into it… he didn’t enjoy or want to give them to her, and she won’t be able to appreciate it as a selfless act of appreciation.
“No” is a complete sentence 
Easier to practice with mall vendors, street vendors, etc.
“No, I’m good, but thank you” works well too, and seems less harsh.
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I’ve solved this equation: your problem is being likable. Once you fix that, there’s no more issues.
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Some of us come with that feature included for no extra charge 
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Exactly - I was fully upgraded in this regard rolling off the factory floor!
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Haha yeah. Maybe the silver lining here is that the distrust – that comes from encountering energetic crackheads – makes a person more cautious about his or her social circle and more reserved in general.
Andrew Huberman discussed manipulative people in an interview with Rogan (at 36:52 – I tried to cue it up but it didn’t work) where he talks about how they’re not bad people; they may just be trying to get some of their needs met that they didn’t receive in childhood. So they identify and latch on to someone who is positive and healthy.
The irony is, when exhausting people latch onto you, and you give them what they want, you eventually stop being healthy. You lose your charisma and exchange it for withdrawal, paranoia, and the guilt that eventually occurs when you finally do set a boundary.
I would be answering it from a Biblical perspective. So, here are a few versus that address it:
It’s tough though. I feel a great deal of internal conflict because I want to be generous and I want to make people happy. But being selfish with my time and energy protects my peace. It’s a way to prevent unhealthy people from getting too attached in an inappropriate way.
But I think I get what you mean. Because you can change the way you look at selfishness and perceive it more like putting your oxygen mask on first, so that you can be of service to others… or like a mom who works out first thing in the morning so that she has the energy to keep up with her kiddos.
Did I understand what you meant?
This is all really good. That part in bold is something that needs to sink in for me. I’ve never thought about it like that, but it’s a great point. In other words, if you’re not giving freely out of a place of love, then are you really being generous or have you just been guilt-tripped?
The thing about some of the manipulative women I’ve gotten tangled up with is that they have multiple tactics where, when I say something like “no that doesn’t work for me” they will pout like a baby, physically frown at me (not joking!), sometimes conjure up tears, or send me a text about how disappointed they are that I’m not doing the thing they wanted.
Totally agree. Dumb holiday as most are when you think about them.
But I do take advantage of the jewelry sales, and then effusively praise my husband when shiny stuff arrives in the mail. He’s so surprised by what he gets me, and vice versa.
Oh I wish I could record the way I say it. It sounds jovial and kinda sporty. Almost like a cross between a “no” and a “nah” but breathy, as if I have something else to do and am thinking about it while answering them. Nobody ever gets offended by it.
But if I was more fun, I would just say, “No because I don’t want to, and you can’t make me.”
Or how about this: “No because I’ll be busy doing secret things.”
I have some others that I’ve been tempted to use.
This is true… with healthy people. But with (clingy) women, they typically perceive politeness as a reason to keep nudging. It’s as if they think I was nice about it because I really want to do the thing but need them to convince me.
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Highly related to the people who try force junky foods on you. They think you actually want their crap and they’re doing you a favor by nudging you, giving you permission. In reality, I want to say, “No. I don’t wanna look like you.” But that’s socially unacceptable, no matter how honest it is.
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Haha true! And is there a cleanse we can do for it? Maybe if I start inviting people to do enemas with me it’ll all resolve itself.
It doesn’t seem that common of an occurrence though. I asked my female improv teacher yesterday if she’s ever experienced anything like this and it didn’t seem like a regular thing she’s delt with.
She’s likable and charismatic, probably a dozen times more than I am. So my guess is that she just has really good boundaries and is great at communicating them. Or maybe she’s just super busy and has no time to get tangled up in stuff like this.
I will take the upgrade. Can you pass it on to me?
That occurred to me as well. But I’ve had a lot of people get a little pushy with food when they have no interest in clinging to me. So I wouldn’t consider it too big a deal, just sort of annoying.
Lower Body
If you pre-fatigue the glutes and THEN hit deadlifts, you will end up with an extremely sore butt. And that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I’ve never felt the glute max work as hard during deadlifts as I have with this arrangement.
Machine Hip Thrust: 3 x 10 full ROM, then 10 partials
Incredible pump. Those partials at the end were nearly unbearable.
Deadlift: 5 x 5, 5, 3, 2, 1
I hit an every day max (EDM) that was challenging, but it was definitely not a true max. I’m not prepared for that right now as someone who typically hangs out in the 5-8 rep range for these.
Leg Extensions: 4 x 1 minute of torture with 1 minute rest in between sets
Other Stuff
Just saw this ad on Twitter. I didn’t really need another reason to lift but here we are.
Lift so that you never have to worry about hiding or “toning” your bat wings with moisturizer.
Opt for triceps instead. 
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These are also infinitely more sexy than bingo wings.
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